"We're really the bridge between the world of physical documents and receipts and business cards and the paper clutter that you have on your desk and online SaaS tools," explains Marketing Director Jake Brereton.

The company’s most popular offering is the prepaid "Magic Envelopes." Subscribers stuff the blue pre-paid mailer with business cards, receipts, reports and other paper documents.

At Shoeboxed’s office, employees scan the documents and convert the printed paper to digital data.

Shoeboxed also offers mobile apps, uploaders and email addresses to help convert paper to digital.

A Newsletter from Shoeboxed

WHAT: With more than 500,000 users, Shoeboxed relies on email marketing superhero skills to communicate with customers and increase conversions by encouraging account holders to upgrade to premium services.

Monthly newsletters highlight new features and partnerships while also offering advice and tips for business and accounting professionals.

Shoeboxed also uses e-mail to promote webinars meant to introduce free account holders to the benefits of converting paper records to cloud-ready data. Campaigns also target customers who may have been considering purchasing expensive scanners or other do-it-yourself products.

"The goal of a marketing department at a company like ours is to try as many different things as possible and see what sticks," Brereton said.

Brereton said that every campaign provides an opportunity to discover what is working and what needs adjusting. Brereton and members of the Shoeboxed marketing team study campaign reports, looking for places to further improve.

Shoeboxed also pays careful attention to the Heat Maps in their campaign reports. This visual guide to where subscribers clicks helps Shoeboxed further optimize email messages.

"If you’re trying to get someone to link somewhere, you put multiple different messages and multiple different spots of the email," Brereton said. "To one person it might be a ‘learn more’ button. To another person, it might be a ‘click-here’ link. To another person it might be an image. The heat map is perfect for that.

"After two or three newsletters we send out with Contactology, it's pretty obvious where we want to put the things that people are going to click on."